


joy in the face of death

by regionals



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Demaverse, Kidnapping, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, Reincarnation, lot of shit in this fic that idk how to tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-10-04 09:06:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17301806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/regionals/pseuds/regionals
Summary: The hair on the back of his neck stands on end.That's not his arm.





	joy in the face of death

**Author's Note:**

  * For [C0LUMBINE](https://archiveofourown.org/users/C0LUMBINE/gifts), [edy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/edy/gifts), [flightlessnerds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flightlessnerds/gifts), [marsakat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marsakat/gifts), [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts), [violetjosh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/violetjosh/gifts).



> are dema fics even cool anymore lmao,,,. basically anyone ive talked to about this or that’s written something that’s at least inspired me to write this a little bit gets a dedication and yall bitches can FIGHT me about it!
> 
> its kinda corny and kidna based on an au i wrote a few years ago that i will never publish because it was super self indulgent, but like. it spawned this so? it wasnt all bad
> 
> anyways NOW i can finally read ella's fuckin dema fic because ive been putting it off because i didnt want to leech ideas on accident >:')

****The hair on the back of his neck stands on end.

He stops breathing for a moment, and keeps his body as still as possible, trying to listen and to feel around with his senses for anything that could’ve woken him up. He can hear shuffling noises coming from outside, but they’re the kind of noises a nocturnal animal would make.

Humans are much noisier.

He’s quiet about sitting up in the cot that he calls a bed. He always sleeps in his clothes, because after one too many nightmares of someone breaking into the small home he and his family lives in, he likes to be prepared.

Tyler realizes that something’s not right when he catches a glimpse of his arm in the moonlight filtering in through the window.

That's not his arm.

Technically it is, but it’s not the arm that belongs to his current incarnation, so he thinks it’s safe to say that it’s not actually his arm.

He closes his eyes, squeezes them shut until it hurts, and feels around as far as his senses will let him, for any signs of life or anything that could give him a hint as to what’s going on, aside from the fact that he’s in a dream.

He can sense _something,_ but he can’t quite place his finger on it. He can’t tell if it’s one of his family members in the real world, or if it’s a presence in the dream, perceived or not.

When he opens his eyes again, his surroundings are different.

Wildly different.

Instead of being on a bed and in a body wearing clothes that don’t belong to him, he’s in some sort of institution.

There’s a few paintings on the wall, in an attempt to make the room look more homey, but it still looks artificial and smells way too sterile.

He sees a newspaper sitting on a dresser next to a record player.

The date on it doesn’t morph or change and that’s what tips him off to this being a memory from a past incarnation rather than a dream.

Tyler blinks again.

It’s a bad choice.

He blinks and there’s a hand around his throat injecting something creepy and crawly beneath his skin, something that makes him feel on edge and muffle and he can feel it in his bones and his blood and it makes him sick and the next thing he knows he’s actually waking up and the only thought in his head is a sense of danger and apprehension.

*

The first time they capture him is the worst, he thinks.

It’s the worst because he doesn’t know what to expect, or what’s to come.

He thinks back to the dream he had as a teenager, the one where one of his past incarnations warned him to be careful. He didn’t heed her warning. He wasn’t careful.

Someone rats him out and he finds himself being held down in a chapel in _Dema_ with a hand around his throat and he doesn’t know why they’re doing this, not up until he goes a month without any dreams and without being able use any of his abilities.

He gets it, now.

He’s grown up listening to propoganda about how _his kind_ are dangerous. He started to believe it, a little bit, but he gets it now.

They’re threatened by his kind.

They’re threatened and they’ve spent many a millenia trying to figure out how to suppress them.

He can’t easily be controlled and they’re so _threatened_ by it.

*

Tyler’s shocked to find out that there’s moles in Dema.

He didn’t think it was possible and he was giving up hope of finding a way out, of finding a way to escape, until someone approaches him with a handful of oddly invasive questions.

The first thing he notices about her is that she has a strip of yellow tape wrapped around her thumb. He hasn’t seen the color yellow in almost two years.

Everyone here wears blues and grays and blacks.

She says that if he wants out, she can arrange it.

Tyler wants out. He doesn’t like being controlled.

He wants to go back to what he had, to being invisible and anonymous.

She says that it’s not possible, but, at the least, she can get him out of this place. She knows people.

*

Her people come in the middle of the night.

That was the plan Tyler was told of, and they stick to it.

He’s waiting in one of the commons areas, and for a moment, he thinks he’s going to be captured and punished and dragged back to his quarters, but then he notices the yellow. Yellow comes in the form of tape on clothes and scarfs around necks and highlights in their hair.

Their ringleader—he doesn’t speak, but he hands his torch off to someone else, and approaches Tyler. He’s very nonthreatening, despite being big and bulky. His mannerisms and body language scream kindness at him. Tyler trusts him. He’s there to help.

He gives Tyler a hug, and Tyler doesn’t realize how much he’s been craving a hug until strong, muscular arms are around him, and he’s breathing in the ringleader’s scent. He doesn’t smell great, but he doesn’t smell sterile and clean and to Tyler, who’s spent the better part of five years in captivity, it’s the most comforting thing in the world.

The hug is cut short, unfortunately, and they don’t even get to speak. There’s alarms going off and spotlights in his face and then the ringleader is grabbing his hand and telling him to _run._

*

They chase Tyler for five miles or so.

It’s day break by the time they—they being the bishops—realize they’re far outnumbered—and pull back.

Tyler’s on his back and his head is spinning and he feels like he’s going to vomit.

All his eyes can focus on is the color yellow.

There’s dandelions sprouting up between a few rocks on the ground, and the yellow tape on their clothes stands out against the muted greens and beiges that they wear.

Tyler looks down a bit, and he can see yellow on his own body. Even as he’s losing consciousness, he thinks about how this color—yellow—feels like the most empowering thing in the world.

*

Tyler wakes up an undetermined amount of time later, in a tent.

He doesn’t move and he doesn’t open his eyes right away.

He feels around as much as he can (which isn’t much) and he can sense maybe fifty or so people within the vicinity. There’s someone very near him. The someone feels like peaches and oranges and mustard. Muted tones with startling flavor. Their energy is very calm and Tyler finds comfort in it.

Most everyone else is juniper berries and dead leaves. Boring and sad and defeated. Tyler frowns and tries examining the emotions he’s feeling from them before it hits him. They’re mourning, and he opens his eyes as he feels a tear drip across the bridge of his nose. Sometimes it’s fun being spiritually and empathetically inclined, but it can be overwhelming.

He glances towards his feet, and sees that the tent he’s in is drawn closed, but unzipped, and he can barely make out the figure of the other person with him. The other person—the ringleader—is whittling what seems to be a stick into a sharp point and he looks up at Tyler. The lower half of his face is covered in a yellow bandanna and when he sees that Tyler’s crying, he frowns and tugs the bandanna off of his face.

Tyler can see that there’s a cut on his face, starting about a third of the way across his top lip, and extending a few inches past his nose, diagonally, and his first instinct is to sit up, and to reach out and try to help.

The ringleader grabs Tyler’s wrist and asks him what the fuck he thinks he’s doing.

Tyler says that he just wants to help, that his face must hurt. He hasn’t spoken to anyone without the fear of being watched or listened in on in years. He knows he’s being awkward and a little too forward, but the ringleader lets go of his wrist, and allows Tyler to do his thing.

Tyler’s gentle about touching his face.

He’s not all powerful and he can’t completely heal anything more severe than a paper cut, especially not with his powers still as dampened as they are, but he does his best to focus energy into his palm, and when he pulls his hand away, any signs of infection are gone, and instead of looking fresh, the cut looks like it’s a week old.

The ringleader looks at Tyler’s hand as he withdraws it, and calls his powers freaky.

Tyler disregards it. He can feel his gratitude. He asks why everyone is so sad.

He explains that one of their own died.

Tyler wipes his eyes again, because he can sense a small jolt of sadness from the ringleader.

*

Tyler knows he died protecting him.

No one says it, and they don’t have to.

Some of the people give him dirty looks and he can feel tendrils of their anger and resentment wrapping around his energy. Other people are sad yet regretfully aware of the fact that it’s in everyone’s best ineterests if Tyler’s alive and not captured.

Their ringleader lets Tyler stand next to him during the parting rituals. Their parting rituals are like nothing he’s ever seen before. He’s been to a few—back in his old city, where he grew up—and for the most part, it’s always been rather calm and quiet and somber, people crowded around a grave, maybe a few crying here and there, but here—here it’s more raw.

There’s people openly crying and everyone _feels,_ and Tyler can _feel_ that they’re all _feeling._ He tries his best not to start crying from the gross and sad energy that everyone gives off, but he doesn’t succeed.

He’s never watched a corpse get burned before, and he doesn’t like it. It’s not pleasant. It looks disgusting, it smells disgusting, and although Tyler can’t feel anything more than _death_ coming from the corpse, he can still imagine what it would be like if he was alive, the pure agony that’d be flooding the vicinity, and it’s upsetting.

He tugs on the ringleader’s sleeve, and asks him why they’re burning the corpse.

His answer is simple.

It’s so the vultures don’t get him.

*

The ringleader brings Tyler a granola bar a few days later and he learns his name is Josh. He doesn’t think he’s necessarily their _leader,_ or the mastermind behind the rebellion, but people listen to him, and part like Moses parted the sea when he walks by, usually with Tyler trotting behind him since he never knows what else he’s supposed to do.

Tyler’s sitting on the ground in front of a patch of wild daisies. He rubs petals between his fingers, never tugging or squeezing too hard, because he knows it hurts them. People wouldn’t think that plants give off any sort of energy, but they do.

Daisies are always calm and happy. They’re like a good hug after a long day. Tyler really likes daisies. He’s pouring a little water onto them from the canteen Josh had gifted to him, and as he feels their aura getting a little bit warmer, Josh walks up behind him.

Tyler knew he was coming, but he still startles a little bit when he hears twigs crunching under his feet. Josh tries his best not to step on any daisies as he approaches Tyler to tap on his shoulder and to offer him the granola bar.

It’s not very big, and Tyler’s pretty sure it’s part of the stolen rations that one of their scavenger groups acquired, but he hasn’t eaten in two days, so he gladly takes it from him, offering him a thank you and a small smile in return.

Josh sits next to him while he eats, and asks him why he’s always sitting with the flowers.

“It’s cathartic,” Tyler explains. “Daisies feel like getting a hug after a long day. They feel like home.”

Josh laughs a little bit, and Tyler’s quick to examine the energy he’s putting out. He’s amused, but there’s no scorn or ridicule tainting his energy, and he’s glad. “So… Are the bishops just offended that you really like plants?”

Tyler shakes his head. “No. I don’t quite know what they want with me, but… I think they’re threatened by me. How much do you know about the powers that me and my past incarnations have?” He brushes his thumb over the center of a daisy, and sniffs the pollen on his finger. He sneezes shortly after.

“Not a lot. Most people assume you’re hellbent on destruction and war.”

Tyler forwns, and shakes his head. He knows that’s what the propoganda does, but that’s not what he’s about. “It’s not like that. I don’t—I don’t know the extent of my abilities, or whatever you guys’ call them, but that’s not what I’m about. I hate death, more tha nanything. And war. I hate war as well. When I was—when I was in there, they would grab my neck and my hands, and I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s like they flipped this switch and turned off my powers. It sucked.”

“What did it feel like?” Josh isn’t afraid to be curious, and Tyler likes that.

“Kind of like if someone were to blindfold you, or to cram earplugs into your ears over an extended period of times. It’s like they cut off my sense. I couldn’t _feel_ anything. And—and by feel, I mean…” Tyler frowns and gnaws on the inside of his cheek, before looking up at Josh. “I can kind of sense how people feel, or the general vibes that living creatures give off, I guess. It’s—it’s overwhelming, and sometimes I wish I could tone it down, but having it leave completely was… It was fucked up, man. I didn’t—I didn’t feel like myself.”

Josh reaches over, and rubs his thumb under one of Tyler’s eyes, before wrapping his arm around him, and pulling him into another hug. His hand stays firm on Tyler’s back, between his shoulder blades, and Tyler doesn’t usually enjoy being touched, but Josh’s touch feels comforting and warm and he _hates_ being pitied and he hates when peopel feel bad for him, but Josh’s pity doesn’t _feel_ like pity. It feels like genuine concern, like he’s genuinely sorry that bad shit has happened to him.

Tyler lets his head rest on Josh’s shoulder.

*

Their camp is just that—it’s a camp.

It was never meant to be permanent but he still feels sad and a little lost when everything gets packed up. he wants to help, and he tries helping, but everyone works so fluidly without his help, and Josh tells him that it’s alright and that things are being taken care of.

Tyler also doesn’t know why he assumed the rebellion was contained within that one camp. It takes a week of traveling on foot and tolerating everyone’s tired and worn out energy before arriving at what seems to be a city larger than any of the ones he’s ever been to.

It looks run down and almost abandoned, but there’s life inside of it. There’s life within the shadows. He can’t pinpoint exactly how many people reside within the city, but it’s easily within the thousands.

It’s cold out and Tyler’s shivering as he walks down a street, tugged along by Josh, but at the same time he feels warm and welcome. People give him wary looks, but overall seem welcoming. Walls are painted yellow, shades mismatched, and some of the brickwork on the ground is painted yellow. It’s homey, somehow, and it radiates hope. It’s not blinding and it doesn’t shock him, but yellow is like a subtle reminder that even when things seem to be at their worst, there’s always _some_ hope.

*

“What was it like?” Josh asks.

“What was what like?” Tyler has his hands hovering over his knee, mending his kneecap back together, since he tripped and fucked it up fairly good on a stair. Tyler always figured all of his major injuries would come from exciting things, but, of course, on his way to tend to one of the gardens in the city, he busted his kneecap. It’s the most boring injury. It’s almost healed enough to where he can lip at a moderate pace, but it still hurts and he’s almost out of juice, as Josh would call it.

“Being captured. Is that too much of me to ask? They’ve never—they’ve never gotten me. They’ve _tried,_ but I’m… fast, I guess.”

“It was great, man.” Tyler puts on a fake-happy tone. “I had my own room, and they even comped all my food for me.” He’s sure to say all of this in a way to where it sounds like he could be telling the truth, and Josh looks up at him from his place on the floor, flames from his hand growing larger.

(Tyler isn’t the only one with powers. He just happens to be marginally more powerful and have certain abilities that no one else has.)

“Are you shitting me?”

“Of course I am.” Tyler glares down at him. Josh feels apologetic. “It wasn’t nice. I had my own room, and it sucked. I wasn’t allowed to leave without an escort. Sneaking out wasn’t an option unless the guards were changing s hifts, and I managed to slip out. It smelled like rubbing alcohol, too. I don’t know if you’ve ever smelled a sterile room, but after awhile, it starts to burn, kind of like going down a metal slide on a hot day. The food sucked, too. I don’t even know if it was food. It was bland, looked and tasted like unseasoned oatmeal, but supposedly had the nutritional value that I was supposed to eat in a day. So. It wasn’t ideal.”

“No one ever talks about what it’s like to be captured. Hardly anyone has any details about it.”

“I don’t…” Tyler sighs, and gives up on his knee for now. “It wasn’t… I never felt _scared,_ at least not after awhile. I mean—they yanked me away from my family, and at first I thought they were going to kill me, but they didn’t. I had food, as awful as it was, and I was provided for, but they did that thing where they shut my powers off. It’s like—their issue wasn’t with _me,_ but rather… my powers. They can’t control them, not like they thought they could, I guess. I don’t know. Nothing _really_ happened. I didn’t _learn_ anything.”

*

“Why don’t you just kill them, or something?”

“My powers aren’t meant to kill,” Tyler explains, patiently. He’s picking weeds out of one of the flowerbeds. He doesn’t liek taking life, but weeds have a bad energy. They’re prickly and they make him feel like someone’s pricked him with a needle, and since they kill other, more calm energied plants, he justifies picking them. “I don’t like killing things. I feel bad about picking these weeds—what makes you think I could take the life of a conscious being?”

“Don’t you get tired of being on some moral high horse?” Josh puts his cigarette out against the brick wall he’s leaning against. Tyler doesn’t look at him. he can feel his peachy orange mustard energy turning kind of a murky green color, like it does when he’s frustrated. He wants all of this to just _end_ just as bad as Tyler does.

“This isn’t about my morals. I don’t like how death makes me feel, so I don’t kill things. It’s as simple as that. I couldn’t care less about whether or not they lived or died, but I’m not going to be the one that kills them. Do you understand me?” Tyler keeps his tone terse and stiff, not giving Josh any wiggle room to argue with him. If someone else wants to try killing the bishops, then so be it. Tyler refuses to be the one to do it.

*

The second time they capture him hurts the most, but Tyler wouldn’t consider it the worst.

He puts up as much of a fight as he can, but his powers aren’t really the kind that someone would take out onto a battle field, not like Josh’s or Jenna’s or any of the other Bandito’s powers. His are the kind of powers that people would turn to if they were feeling faithless, or needed a nudge in the right direction, spiritually or emotionally, or maybe if they needed someone to dampen the pain of a wound acquired in battle.

He’s not a fighter.

He’s not a fighter, and maybe that’s why he pretty much just gives up as soon as he’s lying on his back on the brick of a bed in the room designated as _his_ in one of their stupid complexes, scratching at his hands and wrists and neck as if that would make the darkness under his skin go away.

He’s pretty sure they sprained his neck, or did something bad to it, while they were essentially kidnapping him. It hurts and he can’t sleep right and it’s not like he can even think of trying to heal it, or to speed the healing process along, because his abilities are cut off.

*

The bishops are so disgusting and creepy that even while his powers are cut off, they still make his skin crawl, and the hair on the back of his neck bristle. They make him feel small, kind of like a spooked kitten trying to disguise the fact that it’s small and helpless.

Their headquarters, so to speak, seems to be this tiny little chapel, not meant to hold more than maybe fifty people. He’s staring them down, kidn of like a Mexican stand off, near the entrance of the chapel, with either of his arms gripped tight in the hands of the guards, or glorified bouncers, maybe, and their little _leader_ just stares back at him, eyes glassy and cold. If Tyler didn’t know any better, he’d say that _he_ was a walking corpse.

Tyler refuses to walk towards them, to the point that he goes limp while their stupid guards drag him towards _them._ They aren’t guards. Tyler needs to find a better word for what they are. They’re strong men who can cary a hundred and sixty three pounds of him, were he to not cooperate, which is exactly what he’s doing. Not cooperating.

They don’t speak, and he thinks they’re experimenting, somehow. He’s carried out of their chapel with burns all over his body, and deposited onto a cot in a place that vaguely reminds him of a physicians office he was in once as a child.

Fluorescent lights glare down at him as a pretty lady who sort of reminds him of his mom tends to his burns, and fluorescent lights haunt his dreams.

*

There aren’t any moles involved in the second rescue effort.

It’s a week after their little experimentation session, the one involving their stupid giant long glass tubes of light that left him covered in burns, burns that aren’t healing as fast as they could be. It’s been awhile since any of them have touched his neck or wrists and he can feels his abilities barely starting to seep back into his veins.

He can feel something, beyond the pain or anything his fingers could even hope to touch. Among all the grays and navy blues and melancholy desaturated purples comes a rush of forest green and muted yellows and most importantly, peaches oranges _mustard_ and he whispers, “Finally,” into the air as he waits.

*

It’s less than comfortable to have Josh carrying him for distances longer than ten or twenty feet. It’s not like he can walk, though, because that hurts way too fucking much, and Josh isn’t about to force him to walk, but he’s not gentle about carrying him. It’s not that he’s being intentionally rough, Tyler doesn’t think. He thinks it’s more that he doesn’t know _how_ to be gentle.

Josh apologizes every quarter mile or so and Tyler always shakes his head and holds onto him a little tighter whle he continues to be piggy backed back to where he came from. Josh isn’t a knight in shining armor like some of the fairly tales Tyler’s mother spoke of when he was a child, but he thinks he comes pretty close.

*

The first time Josh kisses him is while he’s trying to apply some sort of ointment to Tyler’s burns. He feels awful and Tyler’s crying, in agony, because it hurts so bad, and because Josh feels so _guilty._ Josh just… bends down, and kisses Tyler’s cheek. “I’m sorry, Ty.” He’s crying too. “I know it hurts, but—but I gotta do this so it feels better, until you can heal yourself.”

Tyler knows, so he nods. He appreciates everything that Josh is doing for him, and before he gets to it again, Josh bends down and kisses him on the mouth. It’s simple, it’s sweet, it’s comforting.

*

As Tyler’s abilities start creeping back into his bones, he’s able to make somewhat of an effort in hurrying along the healing process of the burns on his body. He starts with his hands and arms, and he’s sitting on the bed in a room he typicaly shares with Josh, working on his right hand while Josh tosses a flame back and forth between his own hands. Josh is bord and is essentially standing guard. (Josh hasn’t left his side for more than an hour since they got back.)

“I can help,” he says, “if you need anything cauterized.”

Tyler glances from his arm, and to Josh’s face. “I don’t need anything cauterized, but thank you for the cocnern,” he mumbles back to him. “In fact, I think adding more burns to the ones I already have wouldn’t, ah, be the best idea, yeah?”

“Why did they burn you so bad? I thought you said they _didn_ _’t_ want you dead.”

“I still don’t think they do. If they wanted me dead, I’d be dead, I think. I think they just want me… neutralized.” Tyler sighs, and wiggles his right hand a bit. It feels a lot better, but he’s going to be left with some nasty scars. That’s okay, though. Scars look cool. “It seemed like they were… experimenting…? I can’t—I can’t remember much of it, because it was… very traumatizing, and at some point I shut off to protect myself, but… I could feel them _tugging_ at it. At my abilities. It’s—it’s like they want to learn. I don’t know why they can’t just ask, y’know? I could tell them.”

“Asking would be a fuck of a lot easier than burning you half to death.”

Tyler huffs, and half-smiles. “How about you? How do your powers work? We’re always talking about _me._ What about you? Do you just conjure fire out of nowhere?”

Josh snorts, and his flame snuffs out. “No. It’s not magic. There’s a give and take every time I miss around with them. If I’m, say, somewhere wet, or somewhere without a lot of oxygen, I can’t do much. Likewise, if I’m near a bunch of gasoline or shit that’s flammable, then I can do some pretty scary stuff. I can’t just create fire out of nothing, though. There’s a lot of—a lot of science and chemistry that goes into it. I didn’t seek out any knowledge on fire, either. It’s more like I have this knowledge ingrained into me, and I try looking into it as much as I can whenever I come across textbooks or research journals pertaining to flame and combustion and etcetera.”

Tyler nods, just a bit. He still has burns on his neck that haven’t healed. “I haven’t really met anyone else with powers, not otuside of everyone here, or myself. Where I come from… If someone has powers, you aren’t going to know about it until the bishops or their people come knocking, pretty much. If anyone finds out someone else has them, then they’re going to get turned in.”

“My parents abandoned me when they figured out I had powers,” Josh admits, quietly. “Someone involved with the rebellion found me, though, and I’ve been here ever since. This community raised me.”

“That’s fucked up, that your parents abandoned you like that.”

“It was either that or face public humiliation, or the mgetting punished themselves, just because of me. If I stayed with them, I probably would’ve ended up in the hands of the bishops anyways. Do you—do you know how many people they’ve captured?”

“It’s in the thousands, easily. You’ve seen their complexes. There’s hundreds of rooms in each of them, not to mention all the other living quarters. Almost everyone there has had their powers snuffed out. It’s kind of super fucked.”

*

Tyler spends a few more months around the Banditos before figuring out that… they sort of don’t have a main objective. Well, they do—destroy the bishops—but to Tyler, it seems like all they’re trying to do right now is to _survive._ They have a lot of fight left in them, but they’re still tired and defeated and stretched a little too thin.

Josh tells him that no matter what they do, they’re always outnumbered. There’s thousands of them—Banditos—but they take in a lot of children and elderly people and people who otherwise _can_ _’t_ fight.

*

Tyler’s kind of shocked when he winds up being the one everyone goes to if they’re sick or hurt.

He knows they have a handful of healers around and a good stockpile of medicine, but if someone’s _hurt,_ he’s sought after.

He’s more or less content with tending to their gardens and making sure their food sources are growing and plentiful, because he’s like that, so, yeah, he’s a little shocked that people start coming to him with injuries, asking him if he can do anything, talking about how they’ve heard about what he did for the cut on Josh’s face months ago, or how he healed the burns all over his body wthin a number of days.

He doesn’t _hate_ it, though, and he doesn’t even necessarily dislike it. He likes helping people. He likes healing people and helping them get better, and it’s good practice, too. He notices that, over time, acting as their _main_ healer, his abilties get more powerful and reliable.

*

Tyler can’t say he’s entirely shocked, though, when Jenna comes up to him, carrying _something,_ an animal, he guesses, judging by the energy radiating from it, covered in a fleece blanket, with her eyes all misty and sad, asking him if there’s anything he could do for it.

They’re in one of the greenhouses, and Tyler’s using tweezers to feed dead flies and dead beetles to a group of Venus flytraps that he’s been trying to nurse back to health when she approaches him.

Jenna’s very sweet. Tyler likes her.

Her powers involve _water,_ and, surprisingly, water is… very versatile. She’s a versatile person, and she can easily adapt to things. Tyler likes that about her, and he’s maybe even a little envious of her adaptability.

“He needs help,” she says, her voice quiet and soft and trembling. Tyler reaches forward to wipe the back of his hand under one of her eyes, because of course she’s crying. He doesn’t think she can necessarily sense emotions to the capacity that he can, but she does have some sort of inclination for it.

Tyler peels back the fleece blanket to reveal, of all the animals she could be carrying, a vulture. His body twitches and he reels his head back to make some sort of hissing noise at Tyler. He knows that vultures aren’t cats, but he still offers his hand towards him to sniff, trying to signal that he’s not going to hurt him, not if he can help it.

It’s also at this moment that he realizes he can commune with animals. It just happens. He knows what he’s doing as soon as it happens—he blinks at the vulture, and he can feel something start in the center of his chest as he tries to focus on extending the general message of _I_ _’m not going to hurt you_ towards him.

Animals don’t communicate like humans do. They don’t speak and they don’t have words, but their actions and noises and any other gestures they make, still have meaning behind them, and Tyler deflates a little bit out of relief because this vulture trusts him. He trusts him, and he sets his bag of dead bugs down so he can take the vulture from Jenna.

Tyler winds up sitting on the floor in the greenhouse with the vulture in front of him, hunkered down, on top of the fleece blanket Jenna had been carrying him in, glaring up at Tyler. Tyler tries being as gentle as he can about poking and prodding at it. He’s not an expert on bird physiology, really, but he thinks it’s safe to say that this little dude has a broken wing.

The vulture is old, too, Tyler notices, as he’s trying to mend the broken bone. His wing wasn’t broken completely—just fractured in a few places—enough to hurt and enough to prevent him from flying, and as it’s getting better and as he feels better about moving around, Tyler notices that he moves kind of like an old man with arthritis. He didn’t know birds could have arthritis, but he’s not surprised.

*

Josh had been out scavenging when Jenna had brought Clifford, the vulture, to Tyler, which is probably why Tyler breaks down into a fit of giggles when Josh spots the vulture walking behind him while he’s heading towards one of the gardens, and bluntly asks, “What the _fuck_ is that?”

Clifford makes a trilling sort of noise, seeming to size Josh up, flapping his wings a little bit, and Tyler bends down to offer his arm for the vulture to sit on. Clifford gets the hint, because he’s a good fucking boy, and although he can’t understand their language, as Tyler’s standing back up, he introduces him. “Clifford, this is Josh. He’s my friend. Josh, this is Clifford, the vulture.”

Josh holds a hand up to Clifford.

Clifford bites at his fingers.

Josh scoffs and yanks his hand back.

Tyler laughs. “He’s saying hello.”

“What—are you a vulture whisperer now?” Josh rubs at his fingers, and trails behind Tyler as he continues walking.

“Technically, I’d say so. I… believe that I possess the ability to commune with animals. I can tell that he’s wary of you because he hasn’t met you before, but he doesn’t seem to particularly dislike you. Jenna brought him to me a few weeks ago. His wing was broken, so… I fixed it as best as I could. We’ve been buds ever since.”

“Charming,” Josh mutters. “He’s still on my shit list for biting me.”

Tyler rolls his eyes at Josh. “Okay, grumpy.”

*

Tyler dislikes having dreams where he lives out a memory from a past incarnation.

Sometimes the dreams aren’t immediately obvious to him, but this one is, if only because the dream starts off with him looking into a mirror.

Instead of his current incarnation’s face staring back at him, it’s the face of the one before him. If anything, he thinks she looks like his little sister.

The dream isn’t anything prophetic, he doesn’t think, which is odd, because usually when he has memory-dreams, he has them for a reason, but he thinks that this one is more or less to show him that, hey, Clifford’s been around for awhile.

In the waking world, his present incarnation is around twenty five years old, give or take, and he knows that the lifespan of some vultures can reach up to forty some-odd years, so he’s only a little surprised when his past incarnation turns towards a window, and smiles as she reaches forward to stroke a few of her fingers down the beak of a vulture, one who suspiciously looks like Clifford.

A younger Clifford, a healthier and less arthritic Clifford.

It makes sense to him, now, why Clifford was so trusting of him right off the bat, aside from the fact that they can actually communicate on a level deeper than verbal or physical.

Animals are something else, Tyler realizes. They’re amazing. They can _sense_ things that most humans can’t, and he has a hunch that Clifford _knew_.

When he wakes up from that dream, he shoots across the room and out of his own bed to shake Josh awake and to tell him about his realization.

Tyler can tell that he’s unimpressed, if his expression, or what he can see of it in the light that’s shining in through the window, and the light coming from the flame he’s holding up in his left hand, has to say anything about it. Though… Maybe unimpressed isn’t the right word. He doesn’t look _amused._ He looks very unamused at the fact that Tyler’s sleepily rambling to him about _Clifford_ and _past lives_.

“Cool, alright; the fucking vulture was your pet in your past life. Either go over there, or get the fuck up here and go back to sleep.” The flame goes out, and although Josh’s words had been harsh, Tyler can feel the sickly sweet cherry affection radiating from him as he covers him in his blanket, and scoots forward to spoon him.

*

“Do the Banditos have a leader?” Tyler asks, to give Josh a distraction. He’s in the process of patching him up, since Josh, bless his loving little heart, got into a bit of a _skirmish_ with a group of people aiming to rob the city blind. (He won, of course, because he’s tough, but he didn’t get away unscathed.)

Josh winces when Tyler prods at a few of his ribs, which seem to be bruised. While he’s hovering his hand over Josh’s ribs, he answers. “Not… really. There’s _Clancy,_ who you… somehow haven’t met yet. He’s, uh… Kind of like our figurehead, I guess…? There’s a council of us who make major decisions, and he’s the face of the council, I suppose. he does get a say in what happens, of course, but out of all of us he’s the best at speeches and shit.”

“What’s he like?” Tyler moves his hand to Josh’s back, since he complained about his back muscles aching. (Tyler’s sure to tell him that’s what he gets for doing a backflip off of the shoulders of one of the thieves like some sort of acrobat.)

“He’s… poetic. Good at writing, too. He’s, um… Kind of skinny, like you. Tall, too. His face is, uh… kinda pointy? I don’t know how to describe him. I’m the brawn, not the brains. You get me?”

“You’re smarter than you give yourself credit for, Josh.”

Josh grunts.

Clifford squawks from where he’s sitting, perched on the windowsill of the room the three of them are in.

“See? He agrees with me.”

Clifford makes one of his trilling noises, and Tyler grins.

He can tell that Josh is amused. “Yeah, yeah. Whatever you say, bud.”

Josh isn’t in nearly as much pain as he was, which is why Tyler doesn’t feel bad about pulling him back towards himself. Josh lets his head crane back so he can look at Tyler, and Tyler bends down to steal a kiss from him. Josh smiles into it, as does he.

*

As if only because the energy was put out into the universe, Tyler happens to meet with… _the council._ It’s not as glamorous as he thought it would be. The council has appropriated some chairs and a dining table from somewhere, and Tyler sits on the far end of it, next to Josh.

Most of what they discuss involves where they’re getting food from, setting up trade with other cities, and going over their plans on what to do in case of an emergency. (Emergency meaning in the event that another group decides to _attack,_ or, god forbid, bishops turn up and try capturing people—namely Tyler.)

Tyler’s staring down at his hands, rubbing at the burn scars on his right hand when one of them addresses him, saying, “What do you think about this, Tyler?”

Tyler looks up, eyes searching for who had said that, before making eye contact with an older gentleman. No one has introduced themselves to him, but he’s pretty sure the older gentleman is Clancy.

He’s not _old,_ but he’s definitely the oldest in the room. Tyler would say mid to late forties, if he had to guess. He looks sort of like a depraved librarian, with curly brown locks peppered with gray and white here and there dropping into his face. He pushes his wire framed glasses up on the bridge of his nose, and Tyler has to wonder where the hell he got glasses.

Glasses are the sort of thing someone would see in a bigger city, a wealthier city. At the least, they must be reading glasses.

He’s tanned, too, which Tyler finds suspicious, given that the area _Trench_ is in tends to be fairly cold and overcast year round, never rising above a little warm.

Clancy tilts his head a bit, an eyebrow going up, and Tyler realizes he’s been staring at him for the better part of two minutes instead of speaking. Oops. “I can locate them, but you guys are going to have to be the ones who kill them.”

“Don’t you want revenge?” He seems confused. Josh reaches over to squeeze Tyler’s knee.

“More than anything, I’d love to see them suffer, but… I’ve said it to Josh before—I don’t like killing things. I feel bad about picking freaking _weeds,_ and I feel bad if I step on a plant. There’s no way I could kill a conscious being. It would _eat_ me, for as long as I lived. I can help locate them, since I can pinpoint which auras belong to them, but I’m not participating in any assassinations.” Clifford trills from the window, as if to support what Tyler’s saying, and Josh rubs his thumb in a semi-circle on his thigh.

*

The first attempt at wiping out all nine of the bishops doesn’t go as planned.

They knew, of course they knew, what was going to happen, but Tyler doesn’t think they necessarily knew when or how. This isn’t to say that the group that is sent doesn’t off three of them, but it doesn’t end very well.

Tyler’s alive, Josh is alive, and Clifford is alive, which is all that _really_ matters to him, at least in the long run, but there’s a handful of others who wind up being colatteral damage, and it’s crushing. Tyler knows that death is a necessary part of what is essentially a knockdown drag out war, but that doesn’t make it any easier for him to accept.

Most of the bodies are brought back to Trench, but there’s a few that aren’t able to be recovered.

Tyler feels sick when he find shimself having to make a sharp noise at Clifford, because he keeps trying to pick at the corpses. He can’t help it—he feeds off of carrion, and Tyler knows that’s what he does when he flies off every day—but, god damn it, he doesn’t want his _pet_ eating the bodies of his dead friends.

The energy in the city goes from its usual chipper tones to the colors of rotting flesh—bruised strawberries, wilting sunflowers, dried grapes, pine needles.

Tyler spends that night crying and vomiting into a waste bin and letting Josh hold him, trying to reassure him that it’s fine, that these things happen, and that he can’t always prevent everyone from dying. Clifford isn’t overly affectionate, since he’s a vulture, but he does perch nearby, occasionally stretching forward to bite and tug on Tyler’s hair, as if to tell him that everything’s going to be okay.

*

Tyler’s engaging in some self medication, feeding dead bugs to the flytraps, and tending to the plants in one of the greenhouses. Jenna sits nearby on a stool, since she has some free time, and since Tyler’s a little lonely and asked her if she’d keep him some company while he does this. (Josh is gone—hunting for animals—and Clifford went with him.)

Things are quiet, too quiet, so he decides to start a conversation. “How does all the death just… not get to you?”

“It does, a lot more than you’d think.” She reaches forward to pick a dead leaf out of Tyler’s hair before continuing. “Acceptance is a part of why I don’t let it get me down for too long. At first, when they found me, it really did get to me a lot… Seeing faces come and go, but… At some point, you have to just learn to accept it. Death is necessary. It’s necessary for creatures like Clifford, who relies on death to eat, y’know? I know—I know you can _feel_ it, feel the energy of it, and how sad it makes everyone, and that it might not be possible for you to just accept it like I can, but for me, it’s important to do. It sucks and it’s not fair, but it’s still important.”

“I don’t know if I can accept it. I mean, shit…” Tyler lifts up one of the flytraps with a finger. “I’m trying not to start crying because this little guy is dying. Life is so precious to me, Jenna. A lot of you guys don’t get it. Josh doesn’t get it. He understands, and he knows that it’s important to me that things don’t die, or that, at the very least, I’m not the cause of death for anything, but he doesn’t get it. Death doesn’t mean the same thing to him as it does to me, or you, even. I’m not—I’m not saying that it’s bad that you guys don’t get it, by the way. It’s okay that death means different things to different people. It’s just that sometimes I wish more poeple _got it._ _”_

“I think that’s very reasonable, Ty. Part of my powers include being able to draw water from plants…” She turns one of her palms up, and they both look at it. “I don’t think I’ve told you, probably on purpose, but when I do it, I feel bad about it. I don’t do it unless it’s necessary—say, we need water, or something, I’ll do it, but… Plants never hurt anyone, not on purpose. We have to do what we have to do to survive, though.”

“Don’t ever kill plants around me, or I will most definitely burst into tears,” he warns her. “I love plants. I wish everyone could feel their energy. I love greenhouses like this one especially. They’re just so calm and being in here is cathartic to me. I know that logistically, they aren’t safe, because…” Tyler reaches forward, and taps on the wall. “It’s basically a house of glass, but whenever I’m in here, I feel so safe.”

“At the least, I think it’s sweet.” She smiles a little bit, and squeezes his shoulder.

*

Love is hard to come by. The romantic kind, at least.

There’s too much running around and trying not to die going on that it takes him longer than he thinks it should to realize that, oh _fuck,_ he may or may not be in love with Josh.

It’s early when he realizes it.

It really isn’t even that much of a realization.

Tyler loves him, of course he does; he knows that.

There’s a morning, though, as the nights are growing longer and days are becoming shorter, where he wakes up a little earlier than he usually does to find Josh getting dressed.

They’re at a point to where it’s not weird for Tyler to watch him dress or undress (and sometimes Josh even does little strip teases for him, just to make him laugh.) He likes Josh’s body, and Josh doesn’t care if he checks him out, so he indulges himself.

Josh is staring out of the window of the room that he and Tyler share, in an abandoned apartment complex, brushing his teeth and mindlessly rubbing the fingers of his free hand over a scar on his lower abdomen. (Josh likes to make up stories about how he got the scar—his favorite is one about getting into a prison fight—but Jenna tells Tyler at some point that he got it from tripping on a piece of broken rebar. He’s more inclined to believe Jenna.)

Josh is more than Tyler thought could ever exist.

He’s beautiful and Tyler thinks the fact that he’s exhausted is the only thing keeping him from getting up and just _touching_ him.

Clifford is sleeping on the windowsill, and when Josh reaches down for a bottle of water to rinse his mouth out with, he runs a few of his fingers along Clifford’s head. The bird makes a small noise and leans into Josh’s touch and Tyler bites his cheek to keep rfom smiling.

Josh acts like he doesn’t like Clifford, but he loves him and Tyler knows it.

When Josh turns around to spit into a cup, he sees that Tyler’s watching him, and once he’s spit into the cup, he smiles and says, “Morning, Sunshine,” in his quiet little sleepy voice. He smiles his dumb sunshine smile and that cherry red affection wraps around Tyler and makes him feel like a person.

He’s too tired to try filtering his words, which he thinks is why he has the balls to actually say, “I love you,” out loud.

Blood orange shock runs through him, but it turns into the brightest sunflower yellow Tyler’s ever felt from someone as he bends down to kiss him on the cheek and the nose and where ever else his lips can reach on his face.

*

Tyler’s never seen snow before.

The city he comes from is in a valley in the middle of a desert, and Dema is in another valley, one that gets maybe a few rain showers in the winter months, whereas the Banditos live in the northern part of the continent, near a mountain range, and although Tyler was expecting _some_ snow, he’s still shocked after the first snow of the year.

Josh is grumpy about it, of course he is, because he prefers warmer seasons. His powers aren’t nearly as effective in the winter in _snow_ as they are at other times of the year.

Jenna loves it, though, and as soon as they run into her that morning, she starts showing off, showing Tyler all sorts of neat tricks with the snow.

Clifford rides on Tyler’s shoulder as he walks, covered in a crocheted throw blanket. His arthritis doesn’t like the cold weather (and neither does Tyler’s knee) but he refused to let Tyler leave without him.

There’s six inches of snow on the ground, and it’s still snowing. Tyler’s feet are wet and cold, since he’s been wearing the same pair of boots—a pair that’s not fit for snow—for at least four years. Jenna tags along as Josh is leading him towards the clothing stockpile to see if he can’t find him a pair of winter boots and a heavier coat.

Tyler sits on a bench inside of the building, with Clifford in his lap, still wrapped in the blanket, and held against himself, while Josh is looking for a pair of boots in his size. Jenna sits on the floor next to where Tyler’s sitting, and asks, “Isn’t snow amazing?”

“Hm, I’m not really impressed so far,” he mumbles. “It’s cold and wet, and my knee is aching.”

“Why’s your knee being a jerk?”

“I busted it when I first got here. Since then, whenever the weather gets bad, it starts aching real bad.”

“Can’t you heal it?”

“I can’t just fix every injury I get.” Tyler laughs a little bit. “If I could reverse time and put my knee back to it’s original condition, I’d love that, but I can’t. I can _speed_ the process of healing along; I can’t just _fix_ things and make them like they were brand new. If I could…” Tyler holds one of his arms out and shows her his left hand. “I wouldn’t have burn scars all over my body.”

Jenna takes his hand in hers, and extends his arm a little further out, brushing her fingers along the scars. “No one ever really explained why you got burned so bad. It’s just—Josh showed up again, with you, and you were burned all over. No one said why. I mean, if you don’t want to share, it’s cool, but I’ve been a little curious about it.”

“The bishops did it. I can’t remember how, but it’s like… They injected something into me—something bright that burned—and it just… Fucked me up pretty good. They were merciful enough to not burn my face, for the most part.” Tyler tilts his head a little bit, and runs his own fingers along part of his jaw, which is the furthest any of the scars extend. “I don’t know for sure what they were doing to me, but it had to do with my abilities, I think.”

“Pardon my language, but… That’s kind of fucked up.”

Tyler snorts. “On top of that, Clifford doesn’t enjoy the weather either.”

“Right, right. He’s old.” She reaches up and runs her fingers down his beak a few times, and he jerks his head back before biting at her fingers and making some sort of hissing noise at her. She jerks her hand back. “How old is he, anyways?”

“I think he’s in this thirties.” Tyler scratches the top of Clifford’s head, and he ends up with a few bites of his own. He smiles sadly, wishing he felt better. “He has trouble flying in the first place, otherwise I think he would’ve migrated by now. I dunno.”

“How do you figure that he’s in his thirties?”

“Some vultures live into their forties, and I’m around twenty six, I think, so… He’s at least twenty six. He belonged to one of my past incarnations. She, uh, died fairly young, and only had him for a few years or so.”

Jenna gives him a weird look, so he explains further.

“Um. Sometimes my past incarnations share their memories with me. Or… Technically, I think it’s that I remember stuff from my past incarnations, but… Y’know. It’s a thing. The one before found him as a baby, to my knowledge, and raised him and took care of him until she was killed. Not to get sad or anything, but I think—I think he’s been looking for me this entire time.”

Tyler feels a little sad now, and has to wipe under his eyes. “I love this stupid bird so much. It’s ridiculous.”

Josh makes a reappearance just as Tyler’s pressing a kiss to the top of Clifford’s head.

“Is he waxing poetic over the bird again?” he asks as he plops down in front of Tyler to put boots onto his feet. (Tyler could do it himself, but he’s having a hugging session with Clifford.)

Jenna jabs Josh in the arm. “Be nice. Clifford’s been looking for Tyler for a quarter of a century. I think Tyler’s allowed to have a soft spot for him.”

Josh responds as he’s replacing Tyler’s wet socks with dry socks. “I still don’t get it. How does he know you’re _you?_ How do you know he’s the same vulture from your dream, or that your dream is even real? That whole concept is just so weird and foreign to me.”

Tyler’s glad that he can sense emotions, because if he couldn’t, he could easily picture himself getting a little upset with Josh, simply because of his phrasing. He’s curious, though, and Tyler answers him.

“I dream differently than you do. I don’t expect you to understand, and I don’t even know how to explain it, other than you’re going to have to just believe me.”

“What was the name of your past incarnation? The one who had Clifford?” Jenna looks up at him, curious.

Tyler spouts out her name almost before he can register what he’d been asked.

“Do you just happen to know, or…?” Josh raises an eyebrow as he slides the first boot onto Tyler’s foot, and gets to tying it.

“I know all the names of all my past incarnations.”

“How many are there?”

“Fourteen thousand, one hundred and thirty six. I’m the fourteenth thousand, one hundred and thirty seventh.”

Josh whistles lowly. “That’s a lot? How long have you… been a thing?”

“Um…” Tyler spaces out for a moment as he thinks back and tries drawing up memories from his very first incarnation. “Six hundred thousand years, I believe. The first being that could be classified as a homosapien was my first incarnation.”

“So… Will powers phase out once humans evolve again?” Josh is lacing up the second boot by now.

Tyler shakes his head. “No. We’ve evolved since then. Um… I’ve—I’ve had a few scientists as incarnations, so I do apologize if this is a lot, but essentially, it used to be that, well… _I_ was the only person with—with powers, but as humans have evolved, more people acquired them, and people who don’t have them are technically not evolved. It’s kind of complicated and weird and I, myself, am not a scientist, so I’m going to suck at explaining it. I do expect myself and my future incarnations to become, ah, less and less special as time goes on, though.”

“Do all your incarnations have the same powers?”

“Absolutely not.” Tyler shakes his head, and helps Clifford onto his shoulder before letting Josh help him stand up. (Jenna also uses her hands to steady him.) “We kind of… rotate powers, and there’s some incarnations of myself who’ve had powers unique to them. Mostly our powers are spiritual and empathetic, but sometimes they can be focused on the elements, and—and there was even one who could soak up the powers of anyone she met.”

“That’s actually pretty cool.” Josh shrugs, a bit, and as he’s locking the door behind everyone, he asks, “Have you ever had a snowball fight?”

*

Nightmares suck.

Tyler has them, sometimes, but Josh always elbows him awake, or throws something (soft) at him, to wake him up, and lets him know that he’s dreaming.

If they’re sharing Josh’s bed, Josh will hold onto him sometimes, mostly if it’s a particularly bad one, but for the most part, Tyler doesn’t have nightmares. His trauma likes to manifest itself in other ways. (For example, he avoids fluorescent lighting and chapels when possible.)

The nightmare he has on this specific night sucks. It’s a memory from a past life—four incarnations ago, he thinks—and when he wakes up, Josh has to get up too. Josh turns the lamp on, and Clifford makes a few disgruntled squawking noises from where he was snoozing in his nest, which is made up of yarn and twigs and bits of fleece in a corner of the room.

Josh is concerned, which he has every right to be.

Tyler’s panicking, and crying, and trying not to throw up. He’s the kind of person who throws up in response to anxiety. (He does wind up throwing up.)

The nightmare was worse than usual. Usually, when he wakes up, he’s able to ground himself and to tell himself that, yeah, he was dreaming, but he’s _panicking_ and he cant tell what’s real and what isn’t and whether or not he’s dreaming or dead or _what._

Josh helps Tyler get cleaned up once he’s done throwing up, offers him a granola bar to settle his stomach, and lends him some of his own clothes, which are big and heavy, to sleep in, and even goes out of his way to put socks and knitted slippers onto Tyler’s feet since somewhere among his babbling he made a comment about his feet being cold.

Josh isn’t weird about helping Tyler recover from his anxiety attack, not like people do in some of the trashy romance novels Tyler likes to read when he has the time. Sure, Josh spoons him and he goes through a list of things that have happened recently to help ground him, since that’s what he does, but there’s none of that mushy bullshit where the calm rational muscular one kisses the damsel in distress and solves all of their problems, just like that.

He kisses Tyler, of course. Not on the mouth, since he just got done spending the better part of half an hour emptying his guts into a waste bin, but he kisses the side of his neck and tells Tyler that he loves him, and he doesn’t know he’s doing it, but his energy wraps around Tyler’s its presence so warm and comforting, kind of like a secondary layer to the cuddling he’s engaging Tyler in.

Once Tyler’s breathing has evened out and he’s a little more calm, Josh asks, “What was your nightmare about?” He always asks a lot of questions. Tyler thinks that if he were a different person, he’d find it annoying, but he likes that Josh cares.

Tyler listens to Clifford hopping across the floor, on his way to the windowsill, as he’s thinking of a way to answer Josh. “A different set of bishops murdering one of my past incarnations. Four incarnations ago. They killed him.”

“Was it one of those memory dreams you were telling me about?”

Tyler nods. “It felt too read. Too fucking real. What if they kill me next time? The last time they got me, they came close. I’m so _foolish_ to think they won’t kill me. I could’ve died just from _shock_ last time, because I was burned so bad.”

“I don’t care if I have to die trying,” Josh starts, his voice growing quiet and somber and his aura going from cathartic tones of yellow to desaturated dark purples, sad— “but I’m not letting them lay another hand on you. Not if I can help it.”

Tyler doesn’t want to believe him, but he does. “Please don’t die. I don’t think I could live if you died.” He means it.

Josh holds him tighter. “I’ll try.”

*

“Here’s the thing— _could_ your powers be used in combat?”

“I suppose that, theoretically, I could speed up the generation of cells so rapidly that a person were to develop cancer, or just die of old age, but it’d take a lot of energy out of me, because the most I can do in one sitting without passing out or hurting myself is get rid of infection and move along the healing process of wounds about a month. It’s better than it used to be—used to only be able to do a week or two at a time. I also have to be up close and personal with someone for my healing powers to work anyways. Really, I’m not that strong.” Tyler shrugs, and runs his fingers over Cliffords feathers. He’s sitting in Tyler’s lap for the duration of this car ride.

(Josh has to go make a _trip_ to a different city, to pass along a message from the council regarding trade routes, and Tyler goes with him on the off chance he gets injured since he seems to get injured a lot.)

“Why do you ask?”

“I’m curious, mostly. I don’t really know a whole lot about your powers, I guess. I mean, I do, but… none of the intricate stuff.”

“To be fair, I don’t know all of the intricacies behind your powers either.”

“If it relates to fire or explosions or heat in any way, I can work with it. That’s all there is to know. Yours are… complicated.”

“I guess. There’s a lot I have left to learn about them. I know that some of my past incarnations with similar abilities could do… some scary shit, that I have yet to learn how to do.”

“Like what?”

“Uh… Well, you know how I can communicate with Clifford? Imagine that, except instead of, say, me asking him to do stuff, I just… _made_ him do stuff. I’ve seen memories from my past lives where a few of them have been able to coerce animals into doing their dirty work for them. Back in the days of Catholicism, one of my incarnations killed a pope by influencing a dog to rip his throat out.”

“Weren’t popes kind of like the bishops of Catholicism?”

“That’s… one way to look at it, I suppose. Uh. To my knowledge… The catholic church wasn’t, ah… It was corrupt, to keep it simple. There were about five of me who focused on taking down that specific church. Some pretty gnarly shit happened.” Tyler shivers a little bit at a few of the memories.

Clifford trills and nips at Tyler’s fingers, so he scratches the tip of his head, because he’s pretty sure that’s what he wants from him. (Tyler also extends the general vibe of a question mark towards him, and he basically just says, _“Yes,”_ back to him. He’s very fond of head scratches.)

*

Tyler learns more about war from the Banditos than he ever did from the years spent in learning institutions.

War is messy, and fucked, and you can never be too careful.

He learns that he can never be too careful when winter is coming to an end.

He’s in the deepest sleep he’s ever gotten in awhile when he finds himself being woken up by the feeling of _energy_ disappearing in the way it does when someone dies. It happens once, then twice, and after the third time, he shoves Josh out of the bed, not wanting to waste any time waking up.

At first, he’s angry. He’s angry at Tyler for shoving him out of the bed like that, and Clifford makes disgruntled hissing noises since the noise had woken him up as well.

Tyler explains to Josh what’s going on, and he loses the attitude pretty quickly.

It takes them all of two minutes to be dressed and out of the room, Josh with hands engulfed in flames in case he has to use them and Tyler’s own hands shaking and ready in case he needs to do _something._

*

As it turns out, the Banditos aren’t the only ones with moles.

The bishops have their own moles too, of course they do, and they apparently had enough of them that it resulted in over fifty casualties.

Most including some of their strongest fighters, plus a few elderly people and children, for the shock value, Tyler thinks.

*

There’s a handful of parting rituals for the deceased, and during each and every one of them, Tyler’s hysterical, on the ground sobbing on Jenna or Josh. Usually Jenna, since Josh keeps himself busy burning corpses. He’s sure it looks odd to see a twenty six year old man sobbing uncontrollably in the arms of an eighteen year old girl, but death _bugs_ him.

Death bugs him and he didn’t know what the fucking point of the massacre was.

It wasn’t right, and Josh ends up having to sit him down and tell him how it is.

He’s sympathetic and all, but he’s not afraid to be stern, and he’s not the kind of person to coddle someone.

“Tyler, we took out _three_ bishops. It was only a matter of time before we saw some sort of retaliation from them. It sucks and I know that you hate seeing people die, more than anything, and I get that this was obviously traumatizing for you, just as it was for me and every single other person in this fucking city, but shit happens, and you need to move on. It’s not right and you shouldn’t have to move on, but until this is all over, you don’t have time to dwell on every little death.”

*

From what Tyler’s seen of him, Clancy is a fairly level headed sort of guy, but the first time he sees him after the massacre, he looks frazzled and upset, like he hasn’t slept in days, and twenty years older than he actually is. (Or maybe he looks his age. Tyler’s unsure.)

He’s summoned Tyler, specifically, and although he doesn’t look pleased about it, he allows him to have Clifford and Josh in the room.

Josh doesn’t _need_ to be there, but Tyler feels safer with him around, and Clifford enjoys following him. (It’s also not like he can fly off to do his own thing for the day. It’s still too cold, and his arthritis is still bothering him.)

As soon as Tyler’s sat on one of the plush couches in Clancy’s living quarters, with Josh on the floor in front of him and Clifford perched on the flower box outside of the window, the eldest in the room says, “I want you to tell me _everything_ that you know about the bishops.”

His aura feels like a branding iron. He’s angry and upset and in mourning. He’s not alone. His form of mourning is unique, though, and Tyler knows he’s not used to being questioned, but he’s still relatively new, so he doesn’t hesitate to ask, “Why?”

“They killed _fifty seven_ of our people! I want their fucking _heads!_ _”_ He’s enraged and Tyler flinches since his aura flares.

Josh unintentionally does the thing where his own aura wraps around Tyler’s, kind of like a spiritual hug, and Clifford squawks. Tyler laughs at Clifford’s squawk, since he’s essentially telling Clancy to shut the fuck up and to stop yelling.

Clancy does compose himself though, and apologizes to Clifford. Tyler realizes he can commune with animals too. “If they want to up the ante, then so be it. We can up our ante too. Joshua here said you wanted to help, and you can help by telling me everything you know.”

Tyler stumbles through telling him everything he knows, and everything he’s picked up.

He tells them that their powers involve the ability to, essentially, shut off others’ powers.

He tells him that, similar to himself, when a bishop dies, they’re reincarnated, and the only way to _really_ end all of this is going to be to knock them down to the bottom of the social and political food chain, and to abolish the title and position of _bishop_ in the first place.

He explains that they have a way to harness energy, too, and to store it in these weird glass tube, and that it looks like light and is more than capable of burning someone alive.

Tyler takes his shirt off and turns in a circle to show off his scars, to show Clancy that they fucked him up pretty good. “They were nice enough to not burn my face. Mostly.”

*

“I’ll go with _you._ _”_

“Tyler, it’s dangerous. You’re the one they want.”

Tyler hates nights like these. The nights before Josh leaves on those stupid rescue missions.

They’re always somber and heavy, and neither of them talk about it. It feels like they’re both already mourning. There’s always the possibility that Josh could get killed, or that something could happen while he’s gone that could result in Tyler’s death.

Josh won’t look at him. He’s going through the top drawer on his dresser, which is old and rockety, looking for one of his shirts; the one he always wears when he leaves.

“I know that it’s dangerous. I’m not stupid. I can stay back at camp or something, or we could—we could use my powers to sense them, make sure we’re alright. I can sense when we’re being snooped on, and that’s a valuable skill. If you got hurt, I could help with that, too.”

“What if they capture you? At this point, they’d fucking kill you, Tyler.”

“What if they don’t? They could just as e asily send a group here to hurt us while you and all our other top guns are out. Shit—they’ve done it while you _were_ here!”

“Why do you want to go so _bad?_ _”_ Josh looks so befuddled and kind of mad as he finally turns to look at Tyler, but more than anything Tyler just feels confusion coming off of him. It’s strong enough that it almost feels as if it’s his own confusion. “You don’t _need_ to go. We’re litterally just slipping in, nabbing a few people that our mole said wanted out, then getting the fuck out. We won’t even be there long enough to set up more than a few tents. The two people we’re grabbing are low risk, and their security is low, and, really, you don’t _have_ to tag along.”

“Josh, I just have a feeling in my gut that things are going to go wrong.”

Josh looks like he wants to argue further, to make Tyler stay either way, but he gives in, figuring that he needs to pick his battle and that this isn’t one that he wants to pick. “Get ready, I guess.”

*

Josh is backed against the brick wall of one of their stupid complexes, with a bishop—not Nico, Tyler doesn’t think—and a handful of the bishops’ foot soldiers as he’d like to call them, with their hands up, and their powers at the ready should Josh decide to try fighting.

He looks at Tyler, and the look on his face says, _“You were right.”_

Tyler doesn’t know what comes over him.

He doesn’t know how, or why he does it, but he does. He feels _rage_ flooding through his veins, balck and goopy and fierce, and he holds his hands up, focusing as much of his energy into his palms as he can.

He doesn’t like killing people, but for Josh, he’d kill anyone, as long as it meant he was safe.

There’s a flash, and what sounds and looks like raw electricity coming out through his palms, and the next thing he knows, Josh is running at him, grabbing his arm, and telling him to _come on,_ and there’s too much adrenaline pumping through his veins for him to realize what he’d done.

*

Tyler’s sleeves are burned half way up to his elbows and everyone looks at him with something akin to fear in their eyes and their auras.

He feels like crying, but he doesn’t have the energy to do it.

Josh is the only one who doesn’t act like he’s scared, save for Clifford, who doesn’t seem to have an opinion either way, since he’s a bird. Jenna isn’t there, otherwise Tyler would hope that she’d at least hug him, and not like he’s going to kill her the first chance he gets.

Josh doesn’t make him talk about it.

He asks, of course.

He asks if he’s okay, and all Tyler has to say for himself is, “I love you, and I don’t want to lose you. They were expendable compared to you.”

Josh curls around him that night, embracing him and making him feel protected and safe.

*

Four down, five to go.

Tyler feels lighter inside despite the fact he killed five people.

*

Tyler’s shaking and feeding flies to his flytraps.

Clifford is perched on the roof of the greenhouse, and squawks just before the door opens.

It’s Jenna. Tyler already knows. She’s sunflowers and dandelions.

She closes the door behind her and he doesn’t want to look at her. “Are you here to act like you’re afraid of me?”

“I’m here to ask you if you’re alright, dummy.” She sits on her usual stool, next to the flytraps. “Are you?”

“Yes and no. I feel lighter, like there’s less of a burden on my shoulders becuse another one is dead. Worse, because I killed five people, thinking they were going to get Josh. People keep acting like I’m going to kill them, or something. I hate it.”

“You’ve never killed anyone, have you?”

Tyler shakes his head. “Not on my own.”

“Not to be morbid, but when it comes to protecting loved ones, and this place, even, you’d do anything. It gets easier.”

“How? Just—how?”

“Give it time, I guess. Those people would’ve hurt Josh. Might have killed him. He’s important to more people than just you.”

“His life isn’t worth any more than anyone else’s life.”

“So? Neither is mine or yours. I’d kill for you. I _have_ killed for Josh.”

“You’re seventeen. Why have you even killed people?” He spares her a glance. Her face is sad.

“Like I said. Protecting this place, and the people that I love and that have taken care of me my whole life. When it comes to family, you’d do anything.”

“Josh is more than that to me.”

“I know that. That’s my point. I can’t fault you for protecting him.”

*

“I want to leave, one day. I _will_ leave.”

“I’ll go with you,” Josh mumbles sleepily. He reaches out for Tyler from his place in the bed, wrapped in blankets. “I hate it here as much as eveyrone else.”

“I can’t spend the rest of my life here,” Tyler admits. “It’s not the worst place to be, I’m not dead, I’m not captured, but I could easily go back to being captured. I don’t like living on edge all of the time.”

“I think all you can do right now is stay alive. Maybe kill a few more bishops, if you’re up for it.” He’s teasing.

Tyler sniffs and smiles a bit.

Clifford squawks.

It could be worse.

**Author's Note:**

> i had another draft of this, but it was in second person pov and idk it was like kinda weird and gave me off vibes so i rewrote it in 3rd person
> 
> i have most of what i wanted to write for this verse in this fic plus a few extra bits to close it off? idk i wanted it to feel like trench, because like the album itself just? doesnt have a conclusion i guess? like the album tells a story and i like that but the end of it is like yeah theres more but this is all ur getting for now and i like that


End file.
